I just got an e-mail from someone starting law school in the fall. Maybe this exchange will be useful to someone, so I figured I'd post. Mostly I just figure I wrote a long-enough response that I may as well repurpose it as blog content. I've taken out some identifying details just in case, although it's all really generic. I also kind of want to apologize to the actual e-mailer, because re-reading my response I realize I was probably unfairly glib and dismissive of real concerns about law school. I don't know, the tone of the e-mail -- what I see as excessive concern about nothing, typical of a lot of my classmates -- set me off a little bit. It's the first sentence of #7 where I probably crossed a line, but I stand by the response enough that I'm willing to post it, so I'm not sure why exactly I'm apologizing.
Hi there,
I'm going to go to [top law school] this fall, and I've been reading
your blog lately... I was wondering if you
could give me some advice on the following things:
1. In terms of study
aides, should I choose Emanuel's or Gilbert's for the commercial outline
part?
2. Other than the commercial outlines, should I also buy the E & E
for each of the core courses?
3. Is there any other study aide that you
think would be helpful?
4. [...] Other than having my resume ready, do you
think I should spend time during the summer making a rough draft of the
letter that I'll be writing to the different firms and trying to figure out the
whole mail merge thing? (which is completely foreign to me) I just can't
imagine having to look for a job during school because I thought the whole
purpose was to spend time on my studies!
5.) What else should I do to
prepare for the 1L firm job search?
6.) Should I do something before law
school (during the summer) to prepare for law school?
7.) Is there something
that you wish you would have known your first 1L semester that you didn't
know and which you think would have helped you do better/study more
efficiently/or be happier?
[Person],
1. - 3. It's impossible for you to think about
study aides before you start your classes and know how your professor teaches,
what kind of material he/she focuses on, what the casebook you're using is good
at or bad at, how you learn the material best, what level of detail you'll be
expected to know, whether your exam is closed book or open book, whether the
questions on the test will be issue spotters or policy questions or a grab bag
of whatever the professor feels like asking, whether the professor's focus is on
the actual rules of law or the policies behind them....... Frankly, study aides
aren't much help anyway. Because they're generic, meant to apply to people at
schools where the law is taught very differently than at [any top law school] None of them
go beyond surface-level stuff, none of them cover the kinds of things you're
going to need to know in order to do well on exams. In a few classes -- and you
won't know which ones until you're pretty close to the exam -- maybe you'll be
so lost that you need something to just give you a picture of the basic-level
stuff. BUT, most of the study guides are probably in the library, you'll spend a couple
hours reading it, and that'll be it. The stuff I ended up buying was different
for each class, and for most classes I just found some old exams from that
professor and didn't buy anything. I bought a treatise that my property
professor had written. I bought a useless study guide for Civil Procedure that
ended up being the opposite of what I needed, because it was so basic and fooled
me into thinking I knew things well enough when really I didn't. The commercial
study guides are largely a waste of money because they're for people at schools
where only the most basic things are taught and where exams are closed-book and
multiple choice. Most of your exams will not be and most of your classes will
expect a lot more out of you, even to get a B, than what's in the commercial
guides. That's not to say the classes are hard. They're not. They just focus
on different things, all shaped around whatever the professor happens to care
about more than merely the topic you think the class will be about. Stop
worrying about study guides until halfway through the semester because there's
no way they will be valuable before then, I promise.
4. [...] Once again, you're thinking about this waaaaaaaay too early. [...] Update your resume, sure. But I don't even think cover letters matter,
all the firms will care about is your resume and for non-firm things they
probably want to know something about why you're interested in them and part of
that may come from actually having been in law school. The people who get firm
jobs 1L summer get them either because they have a connection, or they're
willing to work in a city that isn't too big (Columbus, Nashville, etc), or they
have an amazing resume. I can't imagine the cover letter even gets read. I
don't think it would hurt to have a draft of a cover letter, but I also wouldn't
think that should take more than 20 minutes to write, so I'm not sure why you're
so concerned.
5. You should get to know hiring partners on a
social basis so that six months from now when you ask them to hire you, they
will say yes because they are your friend. Really I don't know what else to tell
you. 1L firm jobs are hard to get, the people who get them get them because
they're lucky or they have connections or they want to work in a smaller city,
where the [top law school] name will get you the job so there's also
nothing to do to prepare.
6. Sleep. Spend time with friends. Law school
requires nothing from you on the first day. I found some online summaries (1-3
pages each) of the classes I'd be taking and read them. Took about an hour. It
was as useful as anything else I could have done. The people who read ahead in
the casebooks didn't get any value out of it because every professor teaches
differently and all of them start assuming you know nothing and wanting you to
know nothing. That said, if you don't have any experience with economics,
reading a microeconomics textbook would actually be somewhat useful for Torts
class. The people without an economics background seemed to have some trouble.
If you're desperate, read Grant Gilmore's The Death of Contract -- most of the
contracts professors seemed to like that one, it talks about the theory behind contracts
and torts. Don't worry if it all seems like a foreign language, just take from
it whatever you can and you'll be really far ahead of the game.
7. I apologize if this sounds harsh, because I
don't mean it to, but the one thing I wish I'd known before law school is that
most of my classmates were the kinds of people who were thinking about study
guides 4 months before class started and that made them not a ton of fun to be
around. And they didn't do any better than the rest of us did, and just drove
themselves crazy hating school and worrying about everything and making
themselves miserable. It doesn't have to be that way. Law school is really
just school, you do as much of the reading as you can, you go to class, you pay
attention, you try your best to understand what's going on, you re-read
everything before the test, you take the test, you'll do fine. No one fails, no
one even gets a C [at most top law schools]. And if your goal is to work at a firm, really, I don't know
anyone who didn't have a half-dozen offers, everyone gets a job, even if you're
at the very bottom of the class, which you won't be, because the people at the
bottom of the class never went to class and played video games all day and got
drunk every night. Some of your classmates will be idiots, even though they got
into [top law school]. You'll be fine. Everyone graduates. Everyone succeeds. You
might get As, you might get Bs, much of that will depend on how well you take
tests and get into the professor's head, and not on how many study guides you
buy. Really. But whether you get As or Bs you'll get a job and, if it's at a
firm, you'll be really miserable but at least you will make a lot of
money.
What might have helped me do (slightly) better
would have been getting copies of old exams earlier and reading them so I knew
what kinds of things to focus on during class.
To be happier, stop worrying about it and realize
you're smart enough, you'll do fine, it's not that hard. You got into [top law school],
you already won. No one outside of your first legal employer will ever look at
your grades, and even if they do, everyone gets good grades.
Good luck
--jeremy
I just want to add this to this post, not from my e-mail reply: I realize this is all a little glib, and a lot of it doesn't apply if you're not at [top law school]. That sucks, and isn't fair, and I don't think it should be that way, but I also think it's probably reality. People I know at less top law schools had more trouble finding jobs and had a wider range of grades. They don't know any less law, they probably know more, and they're probably better lawyers. That isn't fair, the system should be different, etc etc etc.
